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appals the gazer, is the marble pallor lingering there; as if
indeed that pallor were as much like the badge of conster-
nation in the other world, as of mortal trepidation here.
And from that pallor of the dead, we borrow the expressive
hue of the shroud in which we wrap them. Nor even in our
superstitions do we fail to throw the same snowy mantle
round our phantoms; all ghosts rising in a milk-white fog—
Yea, while these terrors seize us, let us add, that even the
king of terrors, when personified by the evangelist, rides on
his pallid horse.
Therefore, in his other moods, symbolize whatever
grand or gracious thing he will by whiteness, no man can
deny that in its profoundest idealized significance it calls up
a peculiar apparition to the soul.
But though without dissent this point be fixed, how is
mortal man to account for it? To analyse it, would seem
impossible. Can we, then, by the citation of some of those
instances wherein this thing of whiteness—though for
the time either wholly or in great part stripped of all di-
rect associations calculated to impart to it aught fearful,
but nevertheless, is found to exert over us the same sorcery,
however modified;—can we thus hope to light upon some
chance clue to conduct us to the hidden cause we seek?
Let us try. But in a matter like this, subtlety appeals to
subtlety, and without imagination no man can follow an-
other into these halls. And though, doubtless, some at least
of the imaginative impressions about to be presented may
have been shared by most men, yet few perhaps were en-
tirely conscious of them at the time, and therefore may not